So, perhaps inevitably, I failed miserably at blogging every day in September.
Actually, I take that back. It wasn't a 'miserable' failure - I averaged one post every two days overall. Most of which I count as proper content. Best I've managed for a long time!
I've been blogging for many years now - on this domain and previous ones - and what I use it for has changed hugely over that time. I remember when "weblog" was still a brand new word. I've gone from geeky updates as I taught myself coding/websites, to comments on news/current events, to general stressed out venting... continue reading »
Instead of writing a meaningful post, this evening I have been fiddling with some of the code that runs this site.
Top tips, because apparently I'm rusty and forget:
Don't indent the closing line of PHP heredoc. No matter how ugly it makes your code look. Because if you leave any whitespace in there the whole thing breaks.
CSS may cascade, but 'rules for classes' take priority over 'rules for just the element'
Anyway, I'd love to be able to brag about the tiny changes I've made to my comment form, but unfortunately when I put the code live the whole website broke. White... continue reading »
Yours eyes are not deceiving you, this is indeed a third blog post in as many days.
Regular readers (hi mum) will know that this is basically unheard of. I've been blogging (on this domain and previous ones) for years and years, but recently things have got a bit neglected, to say the least.
Excuses for lack of updates include:
having a million hobbies and not much spare time
posting stuff on Twitter or Instagram instead
taking far too long to sort through photos, and then no longer feeling it's relevant to write about them
generally falling out of the habit
being a bit lazy
no-one reads it... continue reading »
In their infinite wisdom, facebook have decided to remove the ability to import notes from an RSS feed.
ie the feature I've been using for the past however long, to cross post my blog posts to facebook, so there's more chance of people actually reading them!
The only explanation given is for why you can no longer import to pages:
We want you to connect with your fans in the most effective ways possible. [...] The best way to get people to interact with your content is to give them insight into the links you share on your Wall by... continue reading »
If you can read this, I've successfully managed to move my website to new hosting. For the second time this year.
I've used shared web hosting for many many years now, with rarely any problems. When I went back to uni and became very poor, my sites ended up on a friend's reseller account, costing me nothing. And, er, they stayed there. Service got progressively worse, lots of downtime with no explanation etc
Not ideal, even if you aren't paying Not being able to complain directly was getting a bit annoying (not that their customer support were that helpful anyway), and... continue reading »
I've been working on this new website for far too long. It's still not done (but then again, is my personal website ever going to be 'complete'?), but I think it is at least now in a usable state, so here you go.
What's new?
I've recoded everything (not that you'd notice!). Or mostly everything, anyway. Still in php, obviously, but now vaguely object oriented and PHP5.
User accounts! No commenting without one, haha. There is a point to this - much as I'm intrigued by the idea of telling everyone on the internet every detail about my life, I can't do... continue reading »
This afternoon was a chance to buy an awesome new domain name. Admittedly, I only found this out because Jem told me half an hour beforehand, but nevermind.
Anyway, one spur of the moment decision later, I'm navigating my way through excessive amounts of bloat on the GoDaddy website. Seriously, white space is not a bad thing. You do not need to cram that much information/pictures/crap into such a small space, it makes it impossible to find anything...
Eventually I got through far too many screens of "do you want any other domains?" "do you want hosting?"... continue reading »
I have a new pet hate. Well, really a newly resurfaced old pet hate... On websites, of course:
That. It's an empty input with a 'go' button. Really user friendly
It is, of course, a search box. Clearly many web designers think that this should be obvious to your average internet user. It's not. It's just an unlabelled input box.
This particular example was screengrabbed from the Ubuntu forums, and they really should know better.
I'm not making any claims of expertise when it comes to doing user friendly accessible websites, but I do my best - and things like that... continue reading »
Yes, my internet works again - which means I've uploaded all the stuff I've been working on offline for the last few weeks ooh, shiny new features!
Expect it all to break spectacularly, heh.
If you're reading this it means I've successfully moved my website to a different and possibly less flakey server...
Not quite finished with 'improvements' yet (ha, as if I'll ever be). Got loads more to do on the photo gallery, which I thought would be fairly straightforward but has actually turned into a much bigger project than originally planned.
Nice to see that my new ISP started charging on the day I placed the order, rather than now (two weeks later) when the internet actually starts working....
Anyway, the broadband is on, and is rather fast so I'm happy. Now I can go back to some serious job hunting.
The new house is very nice, certainly better than previous ones, mostly because this isn't a student house and isn't anywhere near Stoke - which now seems to be home of the BNP. Lovely. We've moved to toryland it seems, hehe.
There's no chavs in the village, no streetlights, no... continue reading »
Not being able to complain directly was getting a bit annoying (not that their customer support were that helpful anyway), and... 
ooh, shiny new features!